After her whirlwind date with Roger Martin, Beth could not sleep, so she ventured into the common room at A T 101 to do some work on her lens project.

No one was around, which was odd. Even at this late hour, there was always someone up working. The place was quiet, almost suspiciously quiet.

"Where is everyone?" Beth said out loud.

As she banged out some code, she thought about how this sort of communal life worked well right now. Dating - particularly someone like Roger - would only cost her emotionally and drain energy from her project. She had to stick with it: Her mother needed a success as much as she did.

Besides, the euphoria she occasionally achieved when her code hummed was her sex. Her project had competitors - the University of Washington had a similar endeavor and what seemed like unlimited money. However, UW's still-crude lens had an antenna to take power from an external source, as well as an integrated circuit to store this energy and transfer it to an embedded transparent sapphire containing a single blue LED. In her opinion, the external energy source was the university's limiting factor, and thus she was searching for ways to harvest energy.

Finally, she heard the front door open, and in came Peyton. "Where were you tonight?" he asked.

"You're a bit frosty," Beth said.

"No, we just had a small crisis, and I didn't know how to get hold of you."

"What?"

"We had a visitor," Peyton said, pushing back in his swivel chair and looking at her.

A chill went through her. She always thought that at some point, her escorting was going to ruin her life, and maybe this was the time.

"A drone," Peyton said.

"A drone?" Beth relaxed a little.

"This was no ordinary drone," Peyton said. "Highly sophisticated. I've never seen a body like it."

"Did you get a picture of it?"

"It took pictures of us! It's smarter! It was definitely here to take photos. Austin's going berserk. He's calling a meeting."

Beth was stunned, her heart racing. Had the drone wanted photos of her? Would someone go to such lengths to bust her on her escorting? No. Don't be ridiculous.